Bird on a Wire
by SombraAlma
Summary: Kate and Sawyer, postrescue. Not based on Through the Looking Glass' flash forward. Chapter 4 uploaded fic complete.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Bird on a Wire  
Rating: PG-ish, I suppose.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or the characters thereof. I'm just borrowing.  
Summary: Kate/Sawyer, post-rescue. Not based on Through the Looking Glass' flash forward.

-----

_Like a bird on a wire/Like a drunk in a midnight choir/I have tried in my way to be free --Johnny Cash_

-----

The first time he visits her, he's wearing a suit. She grins at him, eyes sparkling. "You clean up well. Dress up just for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Freckles." He returns her grin, dimpling, and she notices the woman at the next table sit up a little straighter. "I'm a workin' man now."

"What kind of work?"

He glances around, furtively, keeping an eye on the guard at the front of the room. "Ain't sayin' that 'round here, Sweetcheeks."

She supposes she shouldn't be surprised, but she can't help a slight feeling of disappointment. Maybe he'd been right, after all, about tigers and stripes.

"Got somethin' for ya."

She brightens at that, then, as he reaches into his inner suit pocket and draws an item out, sliding it across the table to her. When she reads the cover of the book, she laughs.

"Helluva book," he drawls.

Again she laughs, leaving him feeling almost giddy. He's always loved how her entire nose crinkles up when she laughs.

"I hear it's about bunnies."

Now it's his turn to laugh. "Wonder where you heard that."

"Hm. I wonder."

When it's time for him to leave, he stands up and rounds the table, leaning over her and kissing her, long and slow. Pulling away, he winks broadly, flipping a small piece of paper onto the table in front of her, and then he's gone.

A business card. He's in sales. She chuckles again. "Got me," she admits to the empty chair across the table, though she'd never say so to his face. She figures he knows already, anyhow.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Bird on a Wire  
Rating: PG-ish, I suppose.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or the characters thereof. I'm just borrowing.  
Summary: Kate/Sawyer, post-rescue. Not based on Through the Looking Glass' flash forward.

-----

The second time he comes, it's not a visiting day. She's irritated at being summoned from her cell, preferring the small, contained area to the strange, dysfunctional community of the rest of the facility. She makes her way reluctantly down the dimly lit hallways, both expecting and dreading a visit from her half-assed excuse for a lawyer.

When she sits down in front of the plexiglass partition and picks up the phone, her head only snaps up to look at her companion when she hears a familiar drawl. "Well, well, Freckles, thought you were never comin' out."

She brightens considerably then, surprised, rewarding him with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Was just in the neighborhood." He shrugs. "I need a reason?"

"I guess not." She tips her head, studying him. "Good to see you, Sawyer."

A slow, disarming grin makes its way across his face and she can just see the wheels in his head turning. She prepares herself for the inappropriate comment she knows is coming.

"Good to see me, or _good_ to see me?" His smirk widens, eyebrows wagging just slightly, suggestively. It'd be creepy coming from anyone but him. "I hafta get this visiting hours thing down. Conjugal visit might be nice next time."

She looks at him skeptically. "You came here to proposition me through a window."

"Don't make it sound so disgusting," he scoffs. "Phone sex ain't so bad either, come to think of it."

She holds said phone away from her ear slightly, wrinkling her nose at him. "I'm going to hang up..."

He sighs. Loudly. "Fine. Whatcha wanna talk about?"

"You came here. What did _you_ want to talk about?"

It'd been so easy on the island. They didn't know each others' pasts, and their futures were just as uncertain. They'd just known they both didn't fit in, as he'd put it, and probably didn't want to. They'd understood each other, and each strangely needed the other, though neither one had ever admitted it and never would.

But here, back in the real world, it isn't so easy. Now he knows of her past, in excruciating detail that he doesn't want, thanks to the news reports he tries to avoid but can't. Not when it's her face plastered across his small television screen. She still knows next to nothing about him, but just the idea that he knows about her leaves her feeling uncomfortably exposed in his presence. And Kate doesn't like uncomfortably exposed.

"You readin' the book?"

She's shaken out of her reverie with his words, and it takes a moment to bring herself back into the present, to this conversation. "I finished it a long time ago." What she doesn't say is that it's been a long time since he first visited, and she certainly doesn't let on that she's minded that fact.

He nods, expectantly. "And?"

"And you were right, it is about bunnies."

"Huh." He actually looks a little unsure as to how to respond to the non-answer, but soon slides effortlessly into amused. "Not much of a reader, are you?"

She actually does look slightly amused at that, and opens her mouth to respond only to shut it again when she's tapped on the shoulder. "Time's up." Kate turns her head to shoot a withering look at the woman behind her, but she turns back to the window, shrugging and giving Sawyer an apologetic look.

He stands up then, as far as the phone's cord will let him, and slaps the glass, irritated, with the back of his hand. "Time-Nazi bitch." He mutters at the guard, and while Kate can read his lips she doubts the other woman cares enough to pay that close of attention. She shrugs again and murmurs a goodbye into the phone before hanging up and standing, turning back towards the door.

She can hear, faintly, Sawyer punching the glass once more for good measure, but she doesn't turn around to see him leave.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Bird on a Wire  
Rating: PG-ish, I suppose.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or the characters thereof. I'm just borrowing.  
Summary: Kate/Sawyer, post-rescue. Not based on Through the Looking Glass' flash forward.

-----

He smiles when he comes on a visiting day and they tell him she's outside, in the prison yard. He hates seeing her inside, needs to see her how he's always known her, with the sun shining on her face, freckles deepening, always moving. As they usher him out into the yard his smile fades; it's bleak and brown and treeless, nothing like the island, where he can still so clearly see her in his mind's eye, free.

At least there's sun.

The guard gestures with a bored hand to the far corner of the yard, and he squints in the harsh sunlight past the basketball players and the small circles of card games in progress and the other awkward visitors, sees a lone figure near the fence.

At first he doesn't recognize her, because she's standing still. He can probably count on one hand the times in his life he's seen her standing still. He approaches her quietly and stands just behind her, fingers hooked in his back pockets, waiting.

"Hey. It's been a while." She still doesn't turn around, but somehow she knows it's him.

"You complainin', I could always leave," he threatens idly, a teasing tone.

She turns then and gives him what maybe could pass for a half smile and he wants to run back to the bored-looking guard and bash her head into the hard ground because don't they know you don't lock a woman like this up?

But instead he flashes her a grin, like he hasn't noticed the weary look in her eyes. "The things I do for you, Freckles..." He reaches into his pocket and draws out a piece of paper, hands it to her. "I actually called up ol' Stay-Puff." He sees he's got her attention now as she takes the paper and reads it, an unfamiliar name and phone number. "Figured with his bein' a genuine billionaire an' all..."

"Millionaire," she cuts in to correct him automatically, almost saucily, and he smirks. _There's_ his Freckles.

"Millionaire, billionaire, whatever. Donald Freaking Trump." He waves a hand dismissively. "Figured he could spring for a halfway decent lawyer for ya."

Now she looks from him to the paper and back again. "You called Hurley?"

"That's what I said, ain't it?" There's an air of disdain to his voice, and he won't say that it'd actually felt good, talking to someone else from the island, someone else who _knows_. "Anyway, call this lawyer guy, don't call him, but from what I figure, that dimwit you've got now ain't worth beans."

"Thanks, Sawyer." She slips the paper into her own pocket and her lips curve up in what might actually be a smile.

-----

He's leaving now (and somehow it always feels like he's leaving _her_) and this time, for the first time, she calls him back. "Sawyer..."

He turns, and she's still got that weary look in her eyes, and there's something else that he can't quite read on her face. She inclines her head just slightly in a "come here" gesture, and he does and she wraps her arms around him so tightly that he 'oofs' and takes a moment before hugging her back.

At first, he thinks he's not going to be the first to let go, he _can't_, but then the guard clears her throat impatiently and he steps back, reaching behind him to unwrap her arms from around his middle.

"'Bye, Sawyer."

He flashes her his grin and doesn't say goodbye back. He won't, or can't (he's not sure which is which, anymore). "See ya, Freckles."


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Bird on a Wire  
Rating: I guess we'll give this part a PG-13.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost or the characters thereof. I'm just borrowing.  
Summary: Kate/Sawyer, post-rescue. Not based on Through the Looking Glass' flash forward.  
AN: Last chapter. This one's for lenina20, who knows how and why I agonized over how this fic would end. Thanks for all the Sawyer (and Kate) discussions, dear.

-----

It's raining the day he arrives at the prison and she's not there.

They usher him into a small back room, where he's never been before, and interrogate him for almost three whole hours. He tries not to look too pleased at the news that Katherine Austen, Murderer, Arsonist, Bank Robber (they say it all as if the crimes are a part of her name), has once again escaped federal clutches.

He discovers he's been her only visitor (other than that sorry little weasel of a lawyer), and that pisses him off and he'd really just like to go find the Doc and kick his self-righteous ass, and that Korean chick's too, but he doesn't (time enough for that later) and instead sits there and lets them ask their questions.

He almost laughs a few times, wants to tell them that he's been tortured by a damned spinal surgeon and a genuine Iraqi, wants to tell them that their warnings about obstruction of justice ain't got nothin' on bamboo spines under his fingernails and a blade through his bicep – but he doesn't, just sits there and gives them his conman smile and says no, he don't know where Kate is and yeah, that's the truth.

And it is the truth, and that pisses him off, too. It's exactly like her to just up and leave and not even tell him about it.

But finally they seem satisfied that he really has no idea where Kate is, and they hand him a business card and tell him to call if he hears anything from her. He gives them another of his conman smiles and says sure, he will.

He stops for a smoke in the wet parking lot and stabs the cigarette out on the card before driving away.

-----

It's raining again, two weeks later, when he arrives home to his dark apartment and can just make out a figure sitting on his couch. He reaches for the gun he keeps on a high shelf and takes the two steps it is to the couch, presses the cold metal of the weapon to his intruder's temple.

A hissing intake of breath. "Sawyer."

He almost drops the gun. "Shit, Freckles."

"You're still carrying a gun around?"

"Never know when an international fugitive's gonna break in."

"I didn't break in. Bedroom window's unlocked."

"Where I come from, Bonnie, that's breakin' in." He flicks on the lamp beside the couch and they both blink in the sudden light. "Damn, girl, you look like hell." She does, she's wet and dirty and bedraggled, but even he can see it was the wrong thing to say.

"I can leave if my appearance is_offending_ you," she returns sharply, but he can hear something in her voice that's sad and almost broken and it scares him.

So he just shakes his head, laying the gun down on the coffee table next to the television remote. "Hungry?"

She nods once, then, "All you've got is bread and beer." (And some leftover Chinese that's got mold growing on it, but she leaves that observation out; it'd turned her stomach to look at it once.)

"You been snoopin' through my fridge?"

A shrug, but she doesn't say anything, daring him with her eyes to get angry at her for that. He returns the shrug and pulls a cell phone out of his pocket. "Whatcha like on your pizza?" At her widened eyes, "Relax, Freckles, I ain't tellin' 'em you're here."

-----

Two empty pizza boxes and several beers later (extra cheese pizza, it turns out, with mushrooms and black olives), he still hasn't worked up the courage to ask her how she'd escaped, how long she's staying, where she's going. Somehow he knows the answers would be lies, anyway. So instead he shows her to the bathroom, hands her a clean towel and one of his old t-shirts. She murmurs her thanks and doesn't close the door all the way before beginning to undress.

He's on the couch, turning the gun around and around in his hands, trying to ignore the sounds of the shower turning on, the swish of the curtain closing around the tub. It isn't until he hears the clunk of the soap dropping to the shower floor, her frustrated accompanying curse, that he stands up, tosses the gun so it bounces on the cushions of the couch. He pushes the bathroom door open and steps inside. "Need some help in there?" He can't exactly help the seductive drawl that comes out in his voice. Old habits.

"Sawyer, get out of here."

But he's already pulling his shirt and pants off, pushing away the curtain and stepping into the shower. He silences her protests with a long kiss and he's almost frightened at how easily she gives in, kissing him back with a desperation he's only ever felt back in the cages, back when she knew he would die.

The hot water is cascading over their heads so he can't see that she's crying when he lifts her up and pushes himself inside of her, but he hears her tears when she mumbles against him, "Don't stop."

And later, when she's sleeping in his shirt, in his bed, he can see the tearstains and finds it ironic that now, he's almost afraid to touch her.

-----

In the morning it's no longer raining. The sun wakes him up and beside him, the bed is empty.

-----

_Like a bird on a wire/Like a drunk in a midnight choir/I have tried in my way to be free_


End file.
